


De-Composure

by GreasePaintEnthusiast



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Herbert is having a rough time dealing with all of it, Hurt/Comfort, MiskMass, Snuggle and Struggle, Started as a whump fic but i am too soft, omg and reader was the third roommate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25679098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreasePaintEnthusiast/pseuds/GreasePaintEnthusiast
Summary: Herbert's arrival home after the Miskatonic Massacre wakes you up. When you go to check on him it becomes painfully obvious something went horribly awry, and you do your best to help out.
Relationships: Herbert West/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	De-Composure

You were ripped from sleep by the front door slamming followed by loud _WHUMP_. The boys had been off doing their dark bidding around the hospital. You’d assumed so, anyway. The house had been empty and quiet when you’d returned home from your shift at Friendly’s, sick of the condescending M&M gaze of the “Cone Heads” you’d been constructing for the past 6 hours. Sometimes you’d bring home a cup of ice cream for Dan, but Herbert never wanted any. If you asked, he would look like he’d been caught doing something bad, and firmly issue a “No thank you.” You were used to him rejecting any sort of gift, and it didn’t **_bother_** you or anything, but maybe it did sting just a bit. You couldn’t tell him that though, for fear he’d come back with something about “tendencies for nurturing” and the idea of that was repulsive… Even if it might’ve been a little true.

You could hear some labored gasping through the walls, accompanied by a few groans. Normally, this could be attributed to the late night actions of Dan and Megan, but something was off.  
“Damn it!”   
By the finale of the curse, you had confirmation that it was undoubtedly Herbert. Worse, it sounded like he was genuinely in pain. You gathered your velour throw around yourself as a makeshift robe and slunk into the hallway, snaps of exhaustion firing off behind your eyes.  
“Herbert?” You called.  
He didn’t respond. You ventured further into the living room to find near darkness. You could see Herbert, though. The moonlight had him backlit so that you could only see his outline, with soft halos of color around the edges of his form. He was almost hunched over, bracing himself against the back of a chair. It looked like his arms were quivering from trying to hold himself up.   
“Herbert, what’s happened?”  
“ **Nothing.** ” He was lying.  
“Where’s Dan?”  
“I don’t know—”  
“Herbert—” He snapped his head in your direction, cutting you off. The lunar glare reflected in his glasses flashed at you, an imitation of the tapetum lucidum that betrayed a wild fear.  
“ **I DON’T KNOW!** ”  
His outburst startled you and you flinched in response. You still couldn’t see his face, but he could see you. Whatever fleece you’d wrapped yourself in was falling off your shoulders, revealing the lace straps that crossed under your bust. He felt so cold, and a racing thought informed him that if your blanket dropped down a bit farther, the thin rayon of your gown would reveal whether you felt the chill as well.  
Herbert shook his head to clear the thought, and turned himself around, leaning back and stretching a little.  
“I— (Y/N) It…” Herbert began.  
You moved closer to him, the shock of his shout having subsided. Hesitantly, you reached out to touch his shoulder and he jerked his focus to where your hand hovered above his acromion. He realized you’d been staring at him the whole time, and it provoked a nervousness in him. His breathing stuttered, and for a moment you thought he might draw back. You laid your palm onto him carefully, and he looked away with a sound you couldn’t quite decipher.  
“Are you hurt?”  
Your voice was so gentle he almost laughed at the absurdity of how easily you offered such a kindness. He was sure that once you knew what his ambitions had wrought upon your friends, you’d offer him nothing but malice. A chuckle tried to manifest low in his lungs, but a sharp pain in his left side caused a gruff wince instead. Hill’s Intestinium Constrictor had probably broken one of Herbert’s ribs, and upon realizing that he sneered to himself. There wasn’t much that could be done to heal it besides rest and ice, and he considered it one of the more annoying injuries to suffer.  
“Herbert…” Your voice was firm now, and he brought his gaze back to you. You raised your hand from his shoulder to cup the side of his face, and to his own mild resentment he leaned into your touch.

You were so warm.  
It was a harsh juxtaposition against the memories of frigid hands and arms that had clawed at him violently, tossed him about like a rag doll, and rendered him helpless to someone else’s will. The last heat he felt was a product of Hill’s patented—probably stolen—Laser Drill burning down against his temporal ridge. He shuddered at the memory and tried to turn away, but you brought your other hand to the side of his face and kept his eyes on you.   
“…What happened?”   
His brows knit and his shoulders slumped before he let out a rough gasp and shot back up. Your eyes popped and you released his face. One of your hands shot behind him, landing between his shoulder blades, and the other pressed flat against his sternum. It steadied him enough to catch his breath.  
“Okay, come on, just—Just sit down for a minute, Herb.” Normally, he hated your nicknames, but he nodded wordlessly and let you lead him. He groaned as he lowered himself down on the sofa, and it gave you reason to be conscientious as you sat down to his right. You took the blanket off your shoulders and he tried to avoid noticing the confirmation of his earlier fragmented thoughts.  
“I need you to lean up.” You were speaking barely above a whisper, and it gave him goosebumps before he glared at you for daring to ask. You raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him as you held up the blanket in front of you, like a magician about to reveal a disappearance. He understood though, and cautiously let you wrap an expanse of the blanket around him. Relief spread over him. You had to have been cocooned for some hours before he had stumbled into the house. The difference in temperature made his teeth chatter, and he whined as his torso shook. Watching Herbert in this state made you feel more than uncomfortable, because you’d seen him like this before.  
“Herbert, do you need me to get your reagent?”  
The fact you acknowledged his habit was almost enough to make him go still.  
“No… It’s not that,” he choked out. He couldn’t tell if his ribs were truly the source of his reaction, or if it was shock. He didn’t want to think about how your close proximity to him could be factoring into it. Gingerly, you leaned forward and put your hand over his, finding him still ice cold, and slowly you rubbed your palm over it, trying to create a modicum of friction. He almost froze completely at this. You’d always found it ironic that intimacy was such a touchy subject for him, but the severity of the present situation pushed that musing to the back of your mind.  
“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to… I’m going to go make you some—” You started to get up, but the hand you’d been petting suddenly gripped your arm. Not in a manner that was rough, but you got his message.  
_Stay._  
It was enough to let you know how severe the situation had become, so you did. You brought yourself closer to him and he released your arm. You tried to weigh your options on how to proceed but then a sound ripped you from your calculations. Herbert was muttering under his breath, but his face was twisted into a scowl of vexation and disgust. You were about to pull back, but another sound tore through him.  
Herbert _sobbed_.  
It felt like he drew the air right out of you before he wailed and lurched forward, trying to throw his head in his hands, but he wheezed sharply and flew back against the couch with a tight grimace and tears running out of his eyes. His whole body went rigid as he took in pained breaths to try and stifle his lamentations. He twisted a bit in discomfort and you realized this was the first time Herbert had ever seemed powerless. Usually he had so much control.  
Ice moved through your chest like a long dagger.  
Dan was probably dead.  
“Herbert?” You didn’t expect your voice to cut through the air, but it had.  
“ _What?_ ” He replied bitterly.  
“Where does it hurt?”  
He still had angry tears streaming down his face, and they were beginning to fog his glasses. He awkwardly ripped him off his face and shoved them into his shirt pocket with an agonized look.  
“Left Side. Either a true or false rib, I can’t be sure.”  
You inhaled deeply and nodded as he took a few wet breaths, trying to calm himself down. Soon enough, wretched giggling started to worm it’s way into his gritted panting. You swallowed and cleared your throat.  
“Herbert, I’d like to try something…”  
He kept his head forward but cast a glance at you.

You had to be meticulous with your approach. Herbert’s ego had been drawn and quartered, and at that moment he was as exposed and fresh to you as one of the graves he’d given vacancy. You inched forward and _tentatively_ wrapped your left arm around his shoulder, guiding his right arm underneath it to wrap behind you.  
“What do you think you’re doing?”  
You had his full attention then. The only emotion he showed beyond wet, red eyes was a look of study. He was searching for clues on your face. The least you could do was offer him a mirror of his usual stoic stability. If you matched his emotional level at that moment, he might recoil and harm himself further.  
“My intention is to allow you to use me as an incline, to stretch out and take some pressure off your ribs. I’ll… be able to keep you from shivering as much, you won’t have to go up the stairs, and I can move one of the cushions to keep your leg straight so there’s not a curve to pull on your core—”  
“Your Iliac crest would grind into my side, and contort me—”  
“I would be laying on my back. My legs would make sure you… remain secured…” You said this with a deadly serious expression, almost glowering at him, something he would’ve been able to recognize from his own mannerisms. Truthfully, That’s not how you wanted to phrase any of it, and the robotic nature of the way you’d had to say it was inciting a small internal revolt that urged you to say, _“Just let me hold you, you miserable dumb bitch.”_

It wasn’t about you, though. It was about Herbert, and if you were going to find out what had happened to make him fall to pieces like this, you were going to have to play the long game. It was something you’d been unknowingly researching the entire time you’d been living together. You would find out later that this had not prepared you for his eventual response.  
“That’s a lot of posturing to get me between your legs.” He didn’t sound angry or mocking. Instead, Herbert sounded exhausted; maybe a little congested.  
“Even if that were the case would you really have a problem with it?” You kept your voice flat and low like you’d planned, but the content of your statement had been too quick to catch. He averted his eyes, and you did your best not to freeze up. He surprised you with a tilt of his head and a raised brow, one of his tells for concession during consideration. He didn’t say anything, but cinched the arm that was wrapped under yours tighter to pull you closer to him, and you took your cue to lie back.

He let out a pained whimper as you both postured yourselves as you’d described, with his face tucked into the crook of your neck. It was followed by a heady exhale that skirted over your shoulder as you tried to pull the blanket over the two of you. It sent a rush of ardor through you that threatened to arch your back in response, but you kept yourself still. Herbert shivered on top of you. Your hands found their way to his hair, absently winding twists into it that wouldn’t stay, and stroking his scalp. Your hand moved lower to a little over his brow and suddenly he hissed. You ripped your hand back.  
“What’s wrong?”  
“I have a… burn on my forehead. I didn’t even remember it until now…”  
“You don’t strike me as a curling iron type, Herb.”  
He _smiled_ at you and you caught yourself before you could melt into the couch.  
Satisfied that you’d avoid the offending area, he nestled back down into you, his free arm draping over your waist. This had to be what it felt like to be chosen by an unfriendly cat, that allowed itself to be pet instead of wishing to be. You suddenly recalled the incident with Rufus and buried any and all cat imagery that lay in your mind.  
“Hill tried to lobotomize me.”  
If you hadn’t been acutely aware of his injuries, you would’ve shot up like a rocket. “ _Hill did what??”_ _  
_ Herbert sighed against your throat again and you had to close your eyes to keep them from rolling back into your head. “He stalked me back here the day after the incident with Dean Halsey…he wanted to **_steal_** my work…”  
Your eyes narrowed at the ceiling. You already knew where this was going.  
“…So, I stopped him…”  
“How did you do that, Herb?”  
“He—he wanted to control me…”  
You could feel a trembling starting in his core, and he made another pained noise.  
“I had to do it, (Y/N)… He stole from Gruber, and he was going to ruin me too!” He had started to rile up again, his voice was strained.

You do your part to counter it. “I believe you. I do want to point out your mouth is riiight next to my ear, though.” Your voice was less stoic by that point. His weight on top of you had an unintended side effect of flooding you with bliss. In any other scenario, it would’ve been easy to slide out of this moment and into a personal fantasy, but Herbert had rarely hinted that he had emotional needs before, let alone expressed them. You had to be present for him.  
“I decapitated him with a shovel in the basement.” He informed you plainly.  
That _was_ a bit shocking.  
“Herbert…”  
“The serum worked perfectly on him…” He continued.  
“You injected a disembodied head with reagent?”  
“I… injected the decapitated body too.”  
“And… How did it go?” It was all you could think to say.  
He was straining again as he spoke. “He… knocked me out… stole it all anyway.”  
“He was responsive?” Your tone ticked up in excitement. Herbert hadn’t had a fully responsive subject yet, and normally that would have been an extremely important event.  
“He had Dean Halsey kidnap Meg… I thought I was being clever by taking Dan there, to save her…” Herbert’s voice gained a hard edge and you could practically hear the deep twist of a frown that formed around his word, his tone creeping into a snarl as he continued.  
“He trapped us down there… Had an army of the dead waiting for his word to attack… and I walked us right into it.”  
Your hand was back in his hair, behind his ear this time, far away from the burn over his eye, and he froze.  
“Are they dead?”   
Herbert didn’t answer right away, and when he did he was practically choking around his words.  
“I don’t know… Hill was giving a soliloquy, and I was being held down… Halsey grabbed Hill and it… distracted him…” You could feel your shoulder growing damp, and you ran your fingers down to the base of his neck, stroking the unruly locks that always stuck out of his collar. He shuddered against you, some of his tension dissipating from the contact.   
“We could’ve escaped then… but I stopped us. I wasn’t done. I… had a theory a-a-and I injected Hill’s body with enough to reanimate him and his recruits twofold. I started to monitor the body’s reaction—But Halsey crushed Hill’s head like a cantaloupe, tossed it like a bucket of paint, and—when he did it—it broke whatever hold he had on the bodies under his control, and they went mad… I tried to stay focused on the body, but it erupted. Hill’s organs had become sentient, and he… attempted to crush me… suffocate me…” He trailed off.  
“How?”  
“His intestines ripped out of his stomach and caught me by the throat… covered my mouth and wrapped around me like a giant python and squeezed…” he growled through his teeth. It hit you suddenly that he was warm now; almost clammy, even. Part of you wondered if it was from the seething hatred that radiated off him as he recounted his evening to you, or if it had just been too long since he could feel another living person.  
“Dan tried to help, but one of… Hill’s _playmates…_ ” he spat the summoned insult out dramatically, “knocked over a shelf of volatile chemicals. They reacted with each other and gassed the place… He had to get out. I was only able to throw him my notes at the last minute… I don’t know if he got out.”  
“Did Meg get out?”  
“I don’t know that either.”  
The room fell silent, and his breathing was growing more haggard with each passing second. He was falling into his own head. Failure and regret brewed under his surface more volatile than the reaction he described, and threatening to asphyxiate him all the same.  
You finally turned your head to face him. His glasses were still in his pocket, and the only word you could find to describe him, as he glared up at you from underneath an arched, accusing, brow, was fragile. Your affections moved from his neck to trace idle shapes along his bicep before you asked him  
“Herbert, how did you escape?” The question was designed to keep him engaged in the present, and not sinking into the past, to decisions he’d made that he couldn’t change.  
He broke eye contact with you, nervously looking anywhere else. “Doesn’t matter. I’m alive aren’t I?”  
It clicked in your mind and you had to halt-morbid giggle when you felt him unwind back into your embrace.   
“Does this make you a cannibal?”  
“No… maybe… I’m not concerned with it.”  
Your hand came back up to caress his neck again and he hummed at the contact. You don’t let yourself think about how closely the sound resembles a purr.   
“I think it’s only cannibalism if you like it…” You breathed out. His whispered reply in your ear is so sweet, that you can feel it in your teeth.  
“I’m not worried.”  
You looked at him again. His eyes were closed and he seemed as close to peace as you’d ever seen him. He cracked an eye open to look back at you.   
“What?”  
“I’m glad you came home.”  
He buried his face against your neck in response. You laid a kiss at his hairline and comfortable with his own repose, you let sleep come back to you. Herbert dozed off listening to the rhythm of your heart, beats echoing steadily inside your chest.   
-  
Dan found you both curled up like that the next morning. The light that streamed in from the doorway caused you to stir and sit up to see him, but Herbert’s arm reached up to pull you back down to him. You raised your other hand in response to Dan’s arrival, just to let him know you saw him; a friendly, “ _Hey pal, congrats, you made it.”_   
You didn’t fully wake up until you realized Meg wasn’t with him.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!   
> As an aside I do just want to mention that "Intestinum Constrictor" is a combination of "Intestinum Crassum" and "Boa Constrictor" and isn't an actual medical term, I made it up to give Hill's gastrointestinal lasso a cool sci-fi name, but I'm also super proud of it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Stay tuned, I got more Herbert on the way.


End file.
